Editorial: 24th Issue November 1st 2019

Blog: http://michaelrdjames.org/

Journal site https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

https://joom.ag/wi0e

The Cosmic Plan of Liberal Humanism

The first lecture is about essay number 8 in Harari’s work “Homo Sapiens”.
Essay Number 8 is entitled “The Creed of Greed” and is intended to highlight
the global pretensions of an economic system that is built upon a possible false
hypothetical or several false hypotheticals. Weber claims that this state of
affairs has been caused by the Enlightenment, by a situation in which an
absence of reason has replaced the ideal of an ordered world with that of a world
in flux(chaos?). The correct cognitive attitude with which to approach such a
world in Weber’s view is the attitude of “Disenchantment”. Jurgen Habermas
agrees with this assessment and responds with a “hypothetical” theory of his
own: the Theory of “Communicative Action” which aims at displacing the
paradigm of consciousness with a language-related paradigm in a practical
context. Habermas speaks of the Enlightenment in the following terms:

"The Enlightenment's belief in progress rested on an idea of reason modeled after

Newtonian physics which, with its reliable method and secure growth was thought to
provide a paradigm for knowledge in general. The impact of the advance of science on
society as a whole was not envisioned in the first instance as an expansion of productive
forces and a refinement of administrative techniques but in terms of its effect on the
cultural context of life. In particular the belief --for us today, rather implausible--that
progress in science was necessarily accompanied by progress in morality, was based not
only on an assimilation of the logics of theoretical and practical questions but also on the
historical experience of the powerful reverberations of early modern science in the
spheres of religion, morals and politics. The cultural rationalization emanating from the
diffusion of scientific knowledge and its emancipatory effect on traditional habits of
thought--the progressive eradication of inherited "superstitions, prejudices, errors"--
formed the centre of an encompassing rationalization of social life, which included a
transformation”

The criticism of Harari refers here to an unholy alliance between money, power
and science that have contributed to a state of affairs where we are discontent or
disenchanted with our life-worlds. Habermas responds to this state of affairs in
the following way:

“Habermas' response to this modern "disenchanted" state of affairs was to--as he

saw it--shift the centre of gravity of theory from the explorations of the powers
of consciousness to an exploration of the powers of action and language or
communicative action. Communicative action aims at a consensus as a result of
mutual understanding in our common lifeworld. The problem is that there are
also steering media in a society which attempt to coordinate actions. Habermas
characterizes this state of affairs in the following manner:
"the transfer of action coordination from language over to steering media means an
uncoupling of interaction from lifeworld contexts. Media such as money and power attach to
empirical ties: they encode a purposive-rational attitude toward calculable amounts of value
and make it possible to exert generalised strategic influence on the decisions of other
participants while bypassing processes of consensus-oriented communication. Inasmuch as
they do not merely simplify linguistic communication but replace it with a symbolic
generalization of rewards and punishments, the lifeworld contexts in which processes of
reaching understanding are always embedded are devalued in favour of media steered
interactions: the lifeworld is no longer needed for the coordination of action."(Volume two of
"The Theory of Communicative Action", p183)”

Harari invokes “The invisible hand” of Capitalism and invites us to trust

them a little longer:

“Now whilst the characterization of Adam Smith is questionable, this description of a theory
of how capitalism functions and how this theory has colonized the arena of our ethical beliefs
and convictions is certainly accurate. Not only has this "new ethics" colonized our everyday
lifeworlds it has also brought about significant historical events. Harari describes brilliantly
how "companies" using this "new ethics" contributed to the building of empires with
mercenary armies and engaged in the disgusting practice of buying and selling human beings
in the service of the supreme good of economic growth as characterized by economic theory.
Toward the end of the chapter the author raises the interesting controversial issue of whether
the idea of economic growth might not be an illusion.

Capitalists respond in two ways to this. Firstly, the capitalists have now created a world that
only capitalists can run. Communism, the only serious alternative, has failed miserably to
demonstrate that it can run societies. These kinds of society, Harari argues, "are worse in
every way". Secondly, Harari argues contentiously, we need to trust the Capitalist a little
longer. Soon everyone will be satisfied with their slice of the pie in spite of past sins of the
slave trade and the exploitation of the European proletariat.

Weber talked about our disenchanted world and the above image of a larger slice of the pie is
an excellent example of a pathetic response to a deep philosophical disenchantment. Compare
the above image from the bakery with Socrates great speeches about justice and virtue, or
with Kant's writings about the awe and wonder we experience in the presence of the starry
heavens without and the moral law within. These great moments in our intellectual history do
now seem to be part of a lost world which we are mourning for in silence against the
background of the promise for a little more pie from the bakery.”

The second lecture analyses essay number 7 in Harari’s work “Homo Sapiens”
and counterargues the theses that are presented in relation to The death of God,
Humanism and a so-called Cosmic-Plan:
The argument presented against believing in a cosmic plan is a claim that the so-called "death
of God" has not led to any large-scale social collapse(depending upon whom one asks and
when one asks such a question?)

For a philosopher like Kant, the announcement of the death of God would have carried no
more meaning than the announcement that a particular way of thinking non-philosophically
about God was becoming less and less relevant. Neither he nor any serious philosopher would
think that the law and order of the world (which is partly a creation of philosophical thinking
from the arenas of science, ethics and politics) was going to collapse because of a collapse of
a way of thinking that was not philosophical. Further, even a scientist interested in collecting
statistics relating to the number of people hurt or killed by terrorism or the violence of local
wars( for example, in Syria) would regret this state of affairs. They would not perhaps
dramatise it in the way Harari has done especially when it is seen against the background of
other sources of violence and destruction in the world. The statistics do not by any means
suggest that there is a global threat to world law and order from these sources.

It is further claimed that because there is no cosmic plan there are no laws determining what
is happening on a global stage. Aristotle, Kant, and a number of other dwellers in the ivory
tower of philosophy would disagree with this. The roots of humanism were planted by the
ancient Greeks culminating in the work of Aristotle with the statement at the beginning of the
Nichomachean Ethics in which it is said that:

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at
some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all
things aim."

Humanism is uncritically characterised by Harari in terms of “feeling”. The
arguments against this are:

Only rational animals capable of discourse can think, plan and aim at this good.Animals lead
their lives in accordance with the drivers of instinct, feeling and emotion and because of this,
they cannot cooperate in the large numbers needed to found cities and communities in which
such art,activities, and inquiries can be pursued for the purposes of the good. Reason, for
Aristotle, enabled man to develop the virtues that then defined the good person and the good
action. Here again, feelings were either an incidental irrelevant accompaniment or psychic
obstacles which needed to be circumnavigated. This is similarly the case in Kant where the
ideas of reason such as Freedom and God jointly motivate the moral law in which it is
scripted that man ought to treat his fellow (and himself) as an end in himself and never merely
as a means. Thus for Kant, the God respecting philosopher, there is a humanistic script to the
human drama leading to the formation of the Cosmopolitan man which is part of the cosmic
plan and there are laws both moral and physical which will explain the free, chosen
pilgrimage of man on the road to a kingdom of ends. For both Aristotle and Kant, the pursuit
of the good is the essence of humanism and Aristotle specifically says in the Nichomachean
ethics that virtue is not a feeling because it would be absurd to praise or blame a man for the
feelings he is experiencing. For him, the humanistic drama playing out is a process of
actualization in which the political conditions are being created for man to acquire the virtues
via politically created educational systems led by a politically educated middle class.
Aristotle, the biologist, believes that man the rational animal capable of discourse is the most
important proximate cause of this actualization process: he believes, that is, that this process
is driven by human nature which somehow participates in the divine through its possession of
reason and the use of this reason in moments of philosophical contemplation. It is probably
this kind of explanation of mans nature which causes Harari to call philosophizing an activity
that takes place in an ivory tower and it is important to point out that, apart from this name-
calling, no argument is invoked to question this truly humanistic view of man that produces
convincing arguments against the simplistic equation of humanism with the feelings man has.
Art is also on the agenda of Harari.s modernist/postmodernist attack on the
foundations of our Western Culture:

“Harari then makes fun of the account of artists being guided by the holy spirit in their great
creations. Now a considerable amount of reasoning goes into the creation of a work of art and
much of it is instrumental reasoning as Wittgenstein noted when speaking about a tailor
creating a suit of clothes.." a little longer in the leg", "more room for the waist", "a little less
grey". Here there is a physical body operating as a standard for the tailor's measurements and
subsequent sewing activity. In many works of art the standard is the psychological feeling of
appropriateness of the artists choice of motif, his choice of colours, his way of painting the
scene we are presented with, that gives rise to not just the feeling we get but also to the
disposition we have to speak with a universal voice about the work, should we find it to be
beautiful. At this point we are no longer in the realm of the hypothetical-instrumental but
rather in a categorical realm. In a work of beauty such as Michelangelo's Delphic Sybil, or his
sculpture "Times of the Day" standing at the front of the Medici's tomb, why should we not
say that some spirit rare and sacred guided the work? Is this not part of what is involved in
"speaking with a universal voice"? If all the laws of physics, evolution, and psychology were
involved in the bringing into being of these works, why should we not see Michelangelo as
merely a medium for these processes that transcend any and every individual? Characterizing
all this as merely a "feeling" is dogmatizing away a complexity that requires much philosophy
to unravel. Characterizing these processes as being caused by some "imaginary"
anthropomorphic agent working in the heavens is a populistic picture of what the serious
theologian or philosopher means by the term "God".

The author suggests that during the medieval period God was the source of everything
valuable in the spheres of politics, ethics and aesthetics.

Has the author forgotten about the fact that works of Plato were translated into Latin? Plato
supplies us with a theory of the good, the true and the beautiful that, though appropriated by
the Church does not rely on reference to God as an authority. The works of Aristotle were not
translated into Latin until the 1200's but then there were still 200 years left of the Middle
Ages. Aristotle's hylomorphic works, it can be argued, even though appropriated by Aquinas
and the church so undermined the dualist view of the universe that the Renaissance was an
inevitability: a Renaissance in which Michelangelo could quarrel with the Pope about his
aesthetic characterization of God and biblical figures painted on the roof of the Sistine
Chapel. The Platonic and Aristotelian formula for knowledge was not "knowledge =Scripture
X logic but rather "justified true belief" where the justification was not by faith but rather by
the works of theories.
Thanks to the publication of Aristotle two centuries earlier the activities of science like all
other cultural activities independent of the church intensified but again the author ignores the
role of theory in his formula for scientific knowledge which is: Empirical data x Mathematics.
Aristotelian science had no difficulty incorporating the idea of the good: all activity, including
scientific inquiry we recall from the Nichomachean Ethics, aims at the good. The definition of
humanist knowledge as "Experience x Sensitivity also ignores the role of theoretical
explanation in the activity of inquiry and the accompanying idea that we should "observe" our
inner experiences is a very modern formula for Solipsism or what Harari very liberally calls
"liberal humanism": one of the "sects" of humanism, as the author puts the matter. The other
sects are even more controversial: communism and Nazism are also forms of humanism on
this postmodernist account of humanism. Both forms of totalitarianism disregard absolutely
the principles of ethics and the belief in the philosopher's Gods, not to mention their unified
total disregard for the individual's feelings about what they were witnessing. Calling the two
world wars, wars of religion between three sects of humanists, surely must strain even the
postmodernists imagination!”
The question this issue raises is whether postmodernism can grap the project of
liberal humanism?